Beacon Moons
by C.Watherston
Summary: The McCall Pack is establishing itself in Beacon Hills as the Nemeton attracts all manner of the big, bad and ugly, including one Agent Rafael McCall, who is up against too many unanswered questions and the searing dislike of his son's friends. He tries to solve the mystery of Beacon Hills and close the chasm between himself and his son, but he's never faced a anything like this.
1. Good Job

Agent McCall didn't quite know what the hell to expect as he and the Deputy piled out of the car.

"Do you think we should call for back-up? Or animal control?" he asked the Agent.

McCall was eyeing the debilitated warehouse. He was about to speak when an ear-bleeding, skin-rending shriek ripped through the air, followed quickly by the rapidly approaching roar of a vehicle. The Deputy and McCall were driven to their knees by the first sound, and then a frantic shout that could have been human had McCall on his feet again. Something smashed into the wall of the warehouse and piled out in shattering chaos.

"Hey!" McCall shouted instinctively as a body emerged from beneath the rubble.

His gun nearly dropped out of his suddenly numb fingers as the figure whirled around; it's eyes were glowing pale blue, it's almost human body hunched over, claws and fangs-

That was all McCall had time to see before something huge plunged out of the gaping, jagged hole in the side of the building, as the terrible shrieks came again. He covered his ears with effort, trying to keep his gun in his hand as he stumbled back against his SUV. The Deputy bunched in at his side, shouting something incomprehensible. The animal-man-thing spun around to face...

"What the _fuck_ is that?!" shouted McCall, eyes blown wide.

No answer came as the thing—all leather and wings and bones, a dripping, needle-toothed maw and slitted eyes—took suddenly to the air. The creature roared, the sound so load and awful and animal it drove McCall and the Deputy to their knees. Squealing brakes tore their attention away from it as more bodies piled out of a familiar blue Jeep.

"Cora, help Derek! Stiles, check if they're alive!"

Was that...? No...how...it couldn't be...

There was more roaring and he twisted to watch as something like the blue-eyed beast leapt up the side of the building, a blur almost too fast to see, with the sound of metal tearing under keratin.

"Hey, you guys-oh _shit_!"

McCall turned aside again and found himself face-to-face with none other than Stiles Stilinski. He had a bleeding cut from the corner of his nose to his ear, blood splattered on his filthy shirt, carrying a metal baseball bat, dented and splattered in something black and thick like tar.

"You've got to be _kidding_ me! I had a date! I had a date with a hot, single, relatively sane-" he cried, waving his arms and glaring at McCall. The Agent's head was spinning too much to reply, when Stiles' rant was cut off at the pass.

"Stiles _hit the deck!_" a female screamed, commanding and absolute.

The teenager rushed McCall, driving him into the ground just as something screamed down from above them, a blast of hot air and the reek of death, the whoosh of leathery wings. The Deputy screamed as he was lifted off the ground, metal scored in high-pitched protest as claws ran along the edge of the vehicle.

"Stiles, _go!_"

McCall identified the girl from the brief flash he saw of her from between the ground and Stiles' lean arm. The Argent girl, sporting one of those heavy-draw combat crossbows. Suddenly he was being hauled up and off his feet, shoved stumbled towards the warehouse.

"Wait, Ryan-"

"He's dead, move!"

It chilled him briefly into absolute stillness, the cold fury of the teenager's words. He'd recall that moment with a grimace for the rest of his life, because suddenly the winged monster was coming at them again, and there was a boy standing between him and it, swinging out with the baseball bat like a knight with a mighty sword; it connected with a sickeningly thick crunch, and the thing spun out like a race car on a wet corner. He didn't remember what movement took him from standing in the open to being crouched by the side of the warehouse, but he realised that Stiles was hurt a second later. The boy held a hand against his wet, red side and coughed, splattering blood against his hand. The bat lay by his side, a prominent bend in the thickest part of it.

"Jesus Chr-I'm calling 911"

Stiles gave him a completely incredulous look.

"Are you _serious_-give me that!-" he snatched the phone out of his shaking hands and pitched it against the wall. Outside of their hideout, somebody shouted Stiles' name.

"I'm fine, go help Scott!" he shouted over her shoulder, around the edge of the wall.

"Scott's here?!" McCall yelped, far less masculine and in control as he would have liked.

"I'm blaming this whole damn on Scott" Stiles muttered darkly, more to himself than in reply.

McCall gave a loud sound of protest, which was cut off by the sound of a round hitting the chamber. Stiles had just shucked his service weapon with practised ease.

"What the hell are you doing with-"

Stiles was already speaking over the top of him, moving into a crouch and picking up his bat as he shoved the gun into McCall's gesturing hands.

"Shut up, shut up, just _shut up_! I don't have time to explain anything to you-" from across the expanse of the warehouse, there was a roar that shook the tin. Stiles swore.

"Stay here! Stay _quiet_! And shoot anything that's not furry!"

He was scrambling to his feet even as he gave his orders in a zero-argument tone, the aluminium of the bat scraping on the asphalt in his scramble.

"What?! Furry?!" McCall shouted, pushing himself to his feet with one hand and tensing on the familiar butt of his gun. Stiles walked backwards a few steps, gesturing wildly.

"If it's _got_ _wings_, put a _bullet_ in it!"

There was a shriek, another crash of metal and body and the earth-shattering roar of the beast and Stiles whirled around just in time to see a tangled, messy rolling dog pile of supernatural pile off the roof of the neighbouring building and crash spectacularly to the ground. Then, quite suddenly, it was absolutely silent.

Stiles sat down hard in the middle of the asphalt and stared at Derek and Isaac, staggering away from the corpse, covered from forehead to thigh in the creature's tar-like blood, chucky splatters of unmentionable gore, and brief, brilliant smears of their own blood. Derek shook, unmistakeably dog-like though Stiles disinclined to comment, and his face became human once more. Isaac bent over, catching his breath, and when he looked up again, his face had also returned to normal.

"You know, in a long, varied career of really, really gross, that-that is just...that's, just... gross"

Derek approached, frowning.

"You're hurt"

"Yeaaa"

Stiles stuck his right hand out, curling his left around the bloody claw marks that had torn through his shirt. Derek gripped his palm and hauled him to his feet.

"We got bigger problems" he said as he jerked his head over his shoulder, where McCall was walking towards them, eyes glued on the mangled, leathery corpse, face white in the gloom.

"Great" Derek bit out sarcastically. Stiles clicked his fingers into a 'you-got-it' gun shape and spat out a mouthful of exertion-sticky spit and blood.

"We gotta get you to Melissa" said Isaac, looking concerned as he picked up Stiles' bat and offered his shoulder. Stiles leaned into the support gratefully.

"What...what is that?" stammered McCall.

"Harpy. Maybe. Not actually too sure. It's all...gooey now anyways" replied Stiles in his knowing, offhand manner, waving a perfunctory hand in the general direction of the monster.

"So...then...wh...what the hell...?"

"Hey! You guys okay?!"

Stiles kind of wished he had a camera for the look on McCall's face when Scott came limping through the ripped gap in the warehouse wall, followed by Cora and Allison. He paused briefly when he saw his father standing there, eyes narrowing.

"What the hell is he doing here?" he demanded when he got closer. McCall started forward, angrily, trying to gain back some control for himself.

"Scott Graham McCall, what the hell is going on here?!"

Scott held up a silencing hand with a quick, distracted frown—he looked like a parent with an annoying child—only to have it swatted away. The three werewolves growled and snarled in unison; McCall of course he'd just struck an Alpha in front of his pack and leaned into the teen's face.

"Don't put a hand up at me, young man-"

Isaac snarled again, louder this time, and flashed enough fang and beta-gold that McCall went green and stumbled back a few steps. Scott shot a reprimanding look at his beta, but otherwise didn't react. He was looking at Stiles, who was trying not to look too impressed. Stiles straightened a little as he met Scott's gaze: a soldier to a general now.

"He was here with...-" he trailed off and stilled, like some of the constant vibrating energy under his skin was switched off. Scott cocked his head questioningly. Stiles cleared his throat and tried again;

"-He was here with Deputy Ryan"

"Where-?"

Stiles jerked his chin to the side, over McCall's shoulder. Scott followed his line of sight to the crumpled, mutilated remains and sucked in a breathe. Stiles unwound his arm from Isaac's shoulders and moved past him towards the body.

"Stiles, you're hurt..." Scott reached for his friend, only to have him shake him off.

"Yeah, so everyone keeps, telling me. I can feel it. It's _bleeding_"

Scott let his hand drop and glanced at Cora, who nodded and moved slowly after the human. For a moment he rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. Then he straightened and turned to McCall.

"Agent McCall, you know nobody is going to believe you about anything tonight-"

The man gathered himself, fluffing up like an affronted bird and eyed Scott.

"Scott, whether you like it or not, I can _prove_ what I have seen tonight, and if you don't explain to me just what exactly you've gotten yourself into here, I will do something about that. Just what-who..._what_ is your friend here? How about you start there" he folded his arms as if this somehow made him the authority figure.

Scott blinked and his eyes were Alpha-red, crimson as fresh blood and glowing softly like embers in the murky night. McCall gasped and took a step back.

"He's what I am. Besides, you took a pretty hard knock to the head. I wouldn't believe...anything you had to say. As a matter of fact, I don't think you even remember what happened here"

"Nice try, Scott, but I didn't get hit in the-"

Scott's fist shot out and crunched into his father's temple, sending him crashing spectacularly to the ground. Allison let out a surprised sound somewhere between a laugh and a gasp and Isaac tried to smother a breathy chuckle into his fist. Derek cocked an eyebrow, but the corner of his lip ticked.

"That probably felt a lot better than it should've" Scott admitted, a little guiltily, but his voice broke into a small laugh when he glanced sideways at Allison's smiling face. He looked across at Stiles and Cora; she was tucked into his side, arms wrapped around his middle and if he squinted he could see black lines on her arm where she was sucking away at his pain. He let his shoulders relax slightly in relief; it had taken Stiles months to work up the courage to finally ask Derek's fierce little sister out, and it was just their luck to have a rabid whatever-the-hell-that-thing-was show up the night of their second date.

He wiped his hands on his mud encrusted jeans and fished his phone out, putting it to his ear. The extent to which he was ignoring the unconscious figure at his feet made Isaac smile.

"Let's clean this mess up and home" he said, his voice dropping into something like a tired, frustrated whine at the end. He acknowledged it with a smile as Derek rolled his eyes and moved off with Isaac towards the corpse.

"Hey, Mom...I'm fine, we're all...well, actually Stiles is kind of beat up, and I think he might need stitches...?...it was a harpy, or something. It's dead, anyway...yeah...no, Allison's here...yeah, tell Chris I'll drop her off...oh, okay...yeah, I'll call the Sheriff...hey, Mom?...-" he glanced back at Agent McCall.

"-I might've, sort've, kind've...I punched Dad. And knocked him out...?...Yeah, okay, love you too"

"What'd she say?" asked Isaac, helping Allison with the container of gasoline from the back of the Jeep. If it was one thing they'd learned; if ripping a thing apart didn't kill it, burning it to a crisp sure as hell made sure it wasn't coming back.

Except for that one time with the phoenix...

"Good job" commented Scott with a grin.


	2. Red

Rafael McCall suddenly, vehemently, wishes he had never taken this goddamn job in Beacon Hills. Wishes he'd never convinced himself that his son needed him there, that the women he left could be in danger, that if she died he'd have to face the wide-eyed child he'd abandoned. He wished he had never stepped a toe over the county line of Beacon Hills.

Stiles Stilinski and his son were standing across the road with the Lahey boy, and he was standing beside his car outside the diner. As he looked between the slashed tires of his SUV and the three teenagers beside the Jeep across from him, Isaac flexed his hand obviously. Yellowed curves flashed at the apex of his fingers, and then disappeared behind his palm. He grinned, narrow and cold, at the fury McCall could feel taking over his features. Scott looked sideways at him, following McCall's gaze perhaps, and laughed. The three of them scrambled to get into the car as McCall stomped across the road. He could hear laughter from the back, and Stiles was bent over his steering wheel trying to turn the key, shoulders shaking. They all tried to smooth their faces over as he knocked on the passenger side window with the back of his knuckles. Scott wiped his smile into his hand and wound the window down.

"Can we help you, Officer? Or Agent? Or can I call you douche bag when you're off duty?" inquired Stiles. Isaac chortled into his hand in the back seat and Stiles grinned across at the Agent. Scott smiled indulgently at his friends and then turned back to the window.

"Are you having car trouble?" he asked, mock sincerely.

"That is vandalism, _and_ it is damaging _federal_ property. I should haul all three of you downtown"

" 'Downtown', are you serious?! Wh-" Stiles' nose was screwed up like he smelt something bad, and his rant was stopped only by a short, meaningful glance from Scott.

"It was an animal, Agent McCall. Even ask your lab geeks; nothing human could have done it"

He didn't have time to reply to Scott's cool eyes, to the smirk hidden in the slant of his mouth, before Stiles was twisting in his seat and holding a fierce silencing finger up to Isaac.

"One sex joke, Lahey, and you're _walking_!"

Agent McCall ignored whatever it was that Lahey muttered—though he could have sworn he heard the name Allison, and his son grinned like he was agreeing—and held Scott's gaze.

"Look, Scott, I want to talk to you. Let's have lunch-"

"Let's not"

McCall's knuckles paled briefly against the window ledge of the Jeep. Scott looked back at him steadily, his face blank of any emotion. 'Polite disinterest' was probably the closest thing to an actual expression. Inside the diner McCall knew his ex-wife was sitting with the Sheriff, sharing chilli fries and laughing, her black curls loose and easy around her shoulders.

"Scott, I was just-"

"You were just _what_?!-" Stiles leaned on the console, forcing Scott to sit back, and his eyes were dark and furious.

"-Turning up at a diner twenty minutes from the station, following my Dad's cruiser, because him and Melissa are having lunch? Yeah right. We're leaving"

He looked at Scott as if for permission. McCall's eyes narrowed at the silent gesture, and realised that Scott was still looking at him, appraisingly. Whatever it was he was looking for, he found it, because he turned to Stiles and nodded.

"Fin-al-lee!"

Stiles put the Jeep into gear and pulled forward, forcing McCall to step back or be run over. He stumbled a little on the pavement and watched the Jeep disappear down the street. When he looked up, the Sheriff was holding open the door for Melissa and caught his eye across the street. He stopped, glancing at the SUV's flat tires, then back at the Agent. He nodded, once, at McCall and then walked by Melissa's side towards the car park.

It had been two weeks since the incident at the warehouse. Rafael nearly got himself landed on probation at the Bureau because he'd reared out of the ambulance, grabbed Sheriff Stilinski by the collar and started demanding answers. After a second complaint from the Sheriff's department—he'd put some heat on the coroner trying to get to the bottom of the 'animal attack' cause-of-death on one too many autopsy reports for him to swallow dry—he'd been ordered by his superior to cool his heels or to face suspension.

So for the last three days, 'cooling his heels' had been exactly what Rafael had been doing. He sorted through endless amounts of paperwork in his borrowed shoe cupboard of an office, sifting for nuggets of truth through miles and miles of news reports, went over every witness report, spent hours on the phone and spent hours standing in silent, empty ex-crime scenes, mulling over questions. At night, he spent hours on his computer in his hotel room, running tentative internet searches and dreaming of glowing, golden eyes and human beasts. He told himself firmly that his son was obviously mixed up in some sort of gang, that there was some new strain of hallucinogenic drug on the market, but deep down he knew with the stone-cold gut instinct of a workaholic law enforcer that there was something much, much bigger at play here.

Something that could turn over dozens of dead bodies, including two teenagers who had by some accounts fallen in with alleged murderer Derek Hale, one of only three survivors of the Hale homestead fire.

The day after he spent four hours by the side of the road while someone came and changed all four of his tires, he found himself sitting at the local coffee dive, tucked into the corner with his tablet loaded with newspaper reports and a cup of strong black coffee. He was engrossed in a report of the kid who'd gone insane two years ago and held the Sheriff's department to gunpoint, cutting the throats of eight of some of the most decorated officers the county had, when somebody slid into the chair across from him.

He flinched as he looked up. There was a young woman sitting primly, fingers laced over her knee, tucked prettily over her other. Her long, brilliant hair tumbled artfully down her shoulders and the scent of expensive perfume wafted across the air between them.

"Can I help you, young lady?"

Her crimson lips twitched, something between a smirk and a sneer.

"What is it exactly that you're looking for?" she inquired, her eyes razor sharp as she studied him with the detached but piercing speculation of a scientist.

"I beg your pardon?"

The edge of her red mouth danced again and she unravelled her legs and fingers gracefully, twisting and leaning onto the edge of the table with perfect posture. Her eyes were unwavering and cold.

"We know you've been asking questions about Erica Reyes and Vernon Boyd. Pulling up the file on Matt Daehler, visiting Isaac Lahey's old house...following the Sheriff on his lunch date with Mrs McCall..." her voice dropped a touch, the pitch rising just a little, enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck prickle defensively at the mock-playful accusation in her voice. Whoever she was, she obviously knew Scott and his friends, and his stomach stirred uneasily at the thought. She'd leaned forward to speak, and now straightened, studying a manicured nail while he glared at her.

"The Argent's are under inquiry, the Hale case is being reopened and I heard a vicious rumour that Jackson Whittimore is wanted back in the States for questioning"

She folded her hands and looked at him expectantly. A nerve in his jaw jumped and he leant forward so sharply he knocked his tablet against the table edge and spilt coffee onto the tabletop.

"How do you-?!" he cut himself off, mind spinning because nobody knew about the request for information he'd put through was in no way public knowledge. She raised a haughty eyebrow and made a small, unimpressed, vaguely satisfied sound. Agent McCall laced his fingers together on the tabletop and looked at her carefully. She smirked, somewhat proudly, like a teacher whose student was beginning to understand something simple.

"He's not 'wanted' for anything, Miss..., ah...?"

"His father is very, very good at what he does; I know he's not-" she whispered this, sarcastically conspiratorial.

"-I also know that you're not going to get an answer out of him, but if you're lucky you'll get a statement from his lawyer telling you in Yale-approved terms that you're a moron for even asking. _I_ am Lydia Martin, and the fact that you don't know that just goes to show how severely lacking your research skills really are"

He raised an eyebrow shortly at that, but there was no real malice in her voice. Mostly just contempt.

"Martin. Are your parents-"

"None of your business? Yes. You're digging the wrong hole, Agent McCall" she told him firmly, barely any inflection to denote the question.

"And I suppose you can tell me where I should be digging?"

"Of course. For a price"

That did surprise him.

"Are you sure you want to play this game with a federal agent, Miss Martin?" he asked, warningly. She actually laughed, brightly, prettily and so completely plastic it made him grit his teeth.

"Oh, Agent McCall. It astounds me that you had anything to do with Scott's upbringing, and I have an IQ of 175-" she looked at him and suddenly the smile was gone, and her face was absolutely cold.

"-We're not playing a game. How many autopsy reports do you have sitting on your desk? Does that feel like a game to you? I sincerely hope not. You need to _stop speaking_!-" he'd opened his mouth and she cut him off viciously.

"-And start _listening_. You already know more than I did when I put it together, so you need to _hurry up_. Clueless people in this town die, and while we don't particularly like you, you have resources that we need"

He was silent for a moment, absorbing this. She reached across the table and snagged his napkin, producing a pen apparently from nowhere and beginning to write something on the margin.

"It's not as a simple as drugs is it?"he asked finally, resigned. She gave a blunt sound that, were she any less than Lydia Martin, would have been called a snort, and signed her name with a flourish on the edge of the thin paper. He caught a glimpse of some numbers as she pushed it across the table at him with one thin finger.

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response. For the record, if you ever find yourself on the opposite side of a board to me, you will never know what hit you-" she tapped her finger on the paper, over the 'L' of her first name and gave him a predatory smile.

"-but you can call me when you've finished _'The Dummies Guide To...'_, okay?"

Standing with remarkable composure, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and strode out of the coffee shop. It was a confident motion he would almost have called swan-like but was at this point more inclined to compare her to a jaguar or tigress, something big and powerful and absolute.

He ended up staring down at the napkin until his coffee got cold.


	3. Howl

It was Derek Hale who opened the door to the loft, and McCall spat out his next words before the young man could shut the door in his face.

"I know what you are"

Derek raised his dark brows and took in the Agent's disheveled, crumpled appearance, the sweat beading his forehead and upper lip, his eyes wide and his hands trembling. His fingers were twitching like he wanted to palm his service piece. Derek was wearing a wife-beater singlet that highlighted toned upper arms and fresh pink scar tissue running along the bulging muscle.

"I'm willing to bet you don't" Derek drawled, folding his arms and taking up the space of the doorway, effectively blocking him out.

He called out Scott's name over his shoulder, a question, and the boy answered back. His voice was low and strained and McCall couldn't make out words beyond an affirmative sort of tone. With a low grumbling noise in his chest, Derek stepped aside and led him into the loft. In the main room, the usual suspects were scattered around, looking like they'd been put through a wood-chipper.

Scott was sitting on the couch between Isaac and Allison, his shirt off, one arm across the back of the seat along Allison's back and his other hand resting comfortably above Isaac's knee. The Hale girl was sitting cross-legged on the rug in front of the couch, toweling her hair dry, eyeing him. Lydia perched on a coffee table holding a bowl for Allison, who was armed with a pair of tweezers and a scalpel, plucking out what looked like shards of glass from a messy, bloodied wound in Scott's side. There was a cut on her cheek held together with butterfly stitches and to the side of the room, near an Ikea dining set, was a pile of ruined, bloody clothing. McCall's chest clenched uncomfortably as Allison cut into new pink skin to extract another shard and then, as he watched, the wound began to heal again.

"Stop moving!" she ordered Scott, frowning and pausing with the scalpel.

"It _hurts_!" he whined.

"It would hurt a lot less if you stopped _moving_" she told him. Scott groaned and let his head fall back onto the back of the couch. Isaac smirked and kissed his naked shoulder. The Alpha lolled his head to look at the Beta and spotted Derek and Rafael. He groaned and curled his head into Isaac's neck.

"So, we're gunna let him in on all the crazy?"

Rafael flinched because he hadn't heard Stiles come in from the other side of the room. The teenager's hair was wet and clean and he was holding two bowls of something steaming. He crossed to Cora and handed her a bowl, setting the other one beside Lydia on the coffee table. Straightening, he swayed, and Derek moved from McCall's side at Scott's sudden whine. His eyes were on his friend even as Stiles tried to wave it off. He looked exhausted, had scratches across his forehead and neck, a split lip and was limping.

"Siddown, Stiles, I'll get the rest" Derek ordered.

Stiles nodded without saying anything and fell messily onto the ground between Cora's legs. She put the towel and bowl aside and wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling into his neck as he muttered something under his breath and winced as he straightening his leg. McCall felt he'd stayed quiet long enough and cleared his throat.

"What was that thing, in the morgue?" he demanded.

It was now the early hours of a Thursday morning. He'd been heading out of the Sheriff's office, red-eyed, at about midnight when he'd heard a commotion towards the back of the building. Beacon Hills wasn't big enough to have it's own forensic department, so bodies were kept at the hospital. However, with the slew of murders, a room in the back had been chilled and converted to hold a few of the more sensitive cadavers. He'd expected a janitor, maybe kids screwing around, not an all out brawl between two glowing-eyed, furry faced monsters and a...whatever the hell it was that they were tearing apart. He'd taken a few shots at everything that moved, instinctively, until one of the furry faced ones whirled around and he'd been looking into a warped version of his own son's features. His mouth was stretched out over honest-to-God _fangs_.

"GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE!" he'd roared, and Rafael had. He'd run for his damn life, out to the car park. Stiles had arrived with a squeal of rubber, armed with another baseball bat, running into the back with the dark haired Hale girl-the one that was supposedly dead in the fires, and the questions that had been skated over when she'd miraculously returned had John Stilinski written all over them—only to return a few minutes later with a body slumped between him and the Hale. When Lydia Martin, Allison Argent and Isaac Lahey appeared in a second car and conversed quickly with Stiles, Rafael had continued to sit in his car. Stake-out, gathering information, he told himself. He was not frozen with terror and indecision.

Isaac and Lydia went into the building. Half an hour later, he watched as none other than Derek Hale exited with them, carrying a body bag, and disappeared around the side of the building. The blue FJ Cruiser he already knew was registered to Derek Hale tore onto the road, heading towards the preserve, a few minutes later. With a blurred, whitened mind, Rafael had sat and revaluated everything he every knew in his entire life. Then, finally, he came to a decision, logged onto his database and found Derek Hale's address. Which is how he came to find himself here, hands full of questions and half-answers lingering out of reach of his shocked mind.

"Thought you said you'd figured it out" taunted Stiles in reply to McCall's question, his eyes closed and his head resting back on Cora's shoulder.

"Oh, I know what you are, make no mistake. I just don't know what...that, other, thing was. Or why you were fighting it" he blurted out.

"Me? I'm not anything. I'm like, Abominable Stiles-ah, _oww_"

He'd moved his hurt leg the wrong way and his face screwed up in pain. Cora put her hand on his thigh and black veins bulged on her arm. Stiles' face immediately relaxed and his body curved more loosely against hers.

"What the _hell_?!" McCall whispered, choked, staring at Cora's arm.

"Neat trick huh?...oh my _God_, I freaking love you" Stiles added, pressing a kiss to Cora's jaw and threading their fingers together on his leg.

"You'd better" she informed him.

"Hey, pretty sure I saved your ass tonight"

She gave him a look that Stiles was pretty sure he'd seen on Derek's face before.

"C'mon...a little bit? At least let me keep _some_ of my masculinity, come on. My girlfriend's a badass. Let me pretend for a bit okay?"

She shook her head at him and curled into his neck protectively.

"You do alright, Batman" she told him softly, secretively, for Stiles' ears alone. He grinned and then seemed to remember McCall standing awkwardly to the side, watching their Pack interact. Scott, it seemed, was nearly asleep with Isaac's fingers carding through his short hair and Allison gently wiping blood from his ribs.

"It was a ghoul, at the morgue" Stiles announced, eyes narrowed at McCall. The agent startled violently. This night was obviously not going as he'd planned. When Stiles had seen him, apparently having a mental breakdown, in the car park of the Sheriff's department, at the back of his mind he'd registered that Lydia was apparently going to get her own way after all. Unless they could get McCall committed, there was no way to keep their huge, fanged and bloodthirsty secrets under wraps any more.

"A _what_?!"

"A-oh for the love of- a ghoul, okay? G-h-o-u-l. _Ghoul_. Freaky, gross, thing, eats dead people, only this one got into fast food and started making it's own. Went rouge or something" he snapped. He'd secretly agreed with Lydia that having a FBI agent on their side could come in handy. He just wished it was _anyone_ but Rafael McCall.

"So...how's that, I mean why? What...so what stops you from, doing that, going rouge?" McCall asked, and there was a chill down his back telling him that he was in over his damn head and that this was a very bad idea. He looked at Scott and thought fiercely that _no_. Even when he was...not himself, Scott had urged him to save himself at least. Whatever else was wrong with their relationship, his son was his family, his blood, and he wasn't about to eat him...or let his friends eat him. Probably. He shifted to feel the comfortable weight of his Glock on his hip and refused to remember that the bullets he'd fired at the second monster in the morgue hadn't even slowed him-it-her-thing, down.

"What's the difference between you and them?" he tacked on the end of his spluttering first attempt, injecting some confidence into his voice.

"We don't kill people" Derek announced firmly, entering from the kitchen with more food. The scars that had scattered his arms at the door were gone. McCall stared at him for a split second as he made the stone-cold realisation that _Derek_ was the second monster from the morgue. The one he'd _shot_! He swallowed and dug his fingernails into his biceps as his head swam.

The bowls smelt like spaghetti with Claudia Stilinski's sauce specially engineered for hungry boys. Scott used to eat the stuff by the bucket, McCall remembered with another skip inside his ribcage. His son seemed to be roused by the smell of it anyway, and sat up, stretching his side experimentally. Allison stroked the back of his neck as Isaac shifted to hold Scott's hand between his own, and McCall came to a subconscious realisation that he must have a hell of a lot more game than he'd had at that age.

"So then, what, you just feed on them, on people?"

"Feed?" echoed Isaac incredulously, a forkful of spaghetti hanging in front of his mouth. Suddenly everyone in the room was looking at McCall.

"What is it exactly that you think they are?" Allison asked cautiously.

"What do you mean 'they'?! All of you"

It was the only way he'd been able to explain the connections between all of them logically. Except...Allison's cheek. Stiles' leg.

"Wait-all of you except you. And Stiles. Neither of you are healing like them" he pointed to Derek, who cocked an eyebrow, unamused.

"Cookie for you, McCall. Human-" Stiles pointed at Allison, then turned his thumb to indicate himself and then pointed to Lydia.

"-also human...aaand mostly human"

"What?" said McCall, confused, as at the same time Lydia turned and glared at Stiles.

"Excuse me?"

"What, it's true-" Stiles retorted to Lydia's icy tone as McCall spoke over the top of their nobody was listening until he said something about blood. Then everyone was listening and staring at him.

"Wait...wait, wait...do you...do you think they're _vampires_?!" Stiles' voice went high at the end of his exclamation.

The look on McCall's face was answer enough and Stiles lost it, curled up on himself, loud, absolute laughter pouring out of his mouth. Isaac laughed into his hand as Allison tried to politely choke down her own amusement and Lydia stared at him distastefully. Cora actually giggled, which made Derek's eyes soften at her.

"Oh g-god, oh my f-f-f, he thinks-_vampires_! Holy-ohmygod-C-Cora, my love, bite me I want to sparkle in the sunlight with you for eternity" Stiles turned into Cora and tugged at the collar of his flannel.

"Oh I'll bite you" she informed him playfully, giving him a gentle push. He was laughing too hard to take offence anyway. McCall, however was. Red-faced he fumed silently at them; most of them laughing, Isaac now cracking Twilight jokes with Stiles, Lydia and Derek the only ones looking completely unamused and Scott silently scarfing down food like he hadn't eaten in days.

"Aren't you going to say something?" Lydia spoke coldly at Scott, who shrugged.

"It was your idea to bring him in on it, Lydia. I said it was-that it wouldn't work" he replied and shovelled another load of food into his mouth while she fluffed her feathers irately.

"He has resources, Scott! Danny can only help us so much-"

"Does one of you want to explain what is going on here" McCall ground out, arms folded and viciously willing the heat in his face to go away. He _would not_ allow himself to be humiliated by a bunch of teenagers. Derek was now leaning on the wall beside Cora and Stiles, eating silently and looking at McCall like he kind of wanted to join in the laughter but wouldn't.

"They're not vampires, you dick. Close though. Same franchise" Stiles said, trying to control his voice, but it cracked at the end and he had to laugh into Cora's neck again. She was grinning a little viciously over his head at McCall, who tried to summon the tenacity to glare at her.

"Shut up Stiles, we are not" growled out Derek.

"You totally are. Isaac _imprinted_ on Scott like a baby duck, and you're totally always running around with no shirt on. Seriously, dude, you're gunna catch something. Would it kill you guys to wear clothes sometimes"

Meanwhile, McCall was readjusting his position.

"Wait a second, you don't mean..." he trailed off because he couldn't put these things to words. It was too damn far out of his depth for him to deal with this.

"Aaawwwwoooooo" howled Stiles teasingly, smirking up at him. Isaac threw a pillow at him. Cora caught it. McCall stared at him blankly until, finally, Scott seemed to take pity on him.

"Werewolves, Agent McCall. We're werewolves" he said bluntly.


	4. Pack

Scott opened his door and heaved a weighty sigh when he found Rafael standing on the other side of it.

"Please, Scott...I just wanna talk" he said, quickly, before his son could shut the door in his face again. Scott narrowed his eyes at him, jaw clenched tight and mulishly set, before sighing again through his nose, aggravated, and letting the door fall open. He walked back and sat down heavily at his desk. On the screen, Stiles' face blinked a couple of times at Rafael's intrusion, and then his eyes flicked to Scott.

"I'll call you back" explained Scott, tired and drawn out. Stiles sneered over Scott's shoulder towards McCall, but ended the call. Scott didn't turn around once he had, instead he saved a couple of word documents and bookmarked an internet search. The silence dragged into something heavy and uncomfortable, until McCall cleared his throat.

"So...werewolves?" he asked, hesitantly.

He'd fainted, embarrassingly, at the Hale's loft three days ago, from a mixture of shock and exhaustion. Allison bought him back to his hotel on her way home, and given him the number of a burner cell they used to communicate within the pack.

(McCall had looked the number up, and found that there was a string of unregistered prepaid burners that had popped up in Beacon Hills over the last two years, with the calls all local and mostly from the Preserve and the high school)

Scott looked at him hard, jutting his jaw thoughtfully.

"Yeah. It's...complicated" he landed on finally, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. Rafael sat down on the bed and looked at him, consciously keeping his body language open.

"Explain it to me"

His son drummed his fingers on the desktop.

"What do you know?"

It was a clever technique, actually; establishing the lines of knowledge in order to play within them. McCall tried to circumvent the trap:

"Why don't you just start at the beginning?"

Scott replied with an unimpressed raise of his eyebrow, mouth flat, calling him out. McCall inclined his head respectfully before he could even stop himself, because he recognised that expression; it meant _yeah, nice try rookie, but no. _Quietly, he collected his thoughts.

"I know that I am out of my league" he admitted, deciding to start simple. Scott made a small, dark sound of amusement that Rafael counted as a win before he moved on.

"I know this all started two years ago, right? Sophomore year. You suddenly made first line, your grades crashed, you got mixed up with that Argent girl-"

"I'm still 'mixed up' with Allison, so watch your mouth" Scott bit out.

"Her aunt killed _dozens _of people, and crippled one...who miraculously woke up the same year as you were...what, like...bitten? Is that right?"

Scott didn't say anything, but he nodded and gestured for McCall to continue. The Agent rubbed his jaw, feeling the _skitch-skitch _of three-day old stubble.

"Then Derek Hale comes back after three years, and his sister turns up dead. You and Stiles accused him of murder-"

"Twice" muttered Scott, sounding guilty. Rafael stared at him for a long moment while he looked down at his hands, clasped loosely between his knees. After a few seconds, Rafael shook himself and left that alone, moving on with the cobbled pieces of the narrative that he had.

"-and you had a restraining order filed against you by Jackson Whittimore. Is he with you or against you? Because he was with Lydia, right?"

Scott made a face and scrubbed his hands over his hair, muttering under his breath. Rafael could have sworn he heard something about _lizards _before Scott started talking about kanimas, which bled into the dynamics of a were pack, and just what sort of monsters were really out there. The clock hands began to slide into night time before Scott finished. He'd pulled his desk chair beside the bed and drawn the triskeles and other symbols they used to identify one another onto a piece of notepad. Rafael let himself digest the information, a headache pounding in his temples as he thought about how it might all apply to the rag-tag bunch of friends and allies Scott had gathered around him.

"Okay, so tell me I've got this right; in a pack, there's an alpha and the alpha's betas. An omega is a werewolf without a pack. There's hunters, who kill omegas, because they're only supposed to hunt werewolves who kill humans. So Gerard and Kate...?"

"They went against the Code. The hunter's Code is 'We hunt those who hunt us' but Chris and Allison go by their own Code now"

"Which is?"

" 'We protect those who cannot protect themselves'. It was Allison's idea" he added proudly, and then sobered.

"Gerard is completely...psychotic. He had cancer, and he decided that if he got bitten and killed an Alpha then he could save himself and use Alpha powers to kill more werewolves"

Rafael swallowed against a wave of bile.

"What about right now? What is the Pack now? You're the Alpha?"

Scott grimaced and sat down.

"I'm _one _Alpha. You know how I mentioned, ah, Alpha packs?-" he tapped the Alphas symbol on the notepad in time to Rafael's nod.

"We had one here, last year. Their leader's name was Deucalion. It's...kind of a long story, and I don't even really know all of it—unreliable narrator, you know?—but I think Gerard betrayed Deucalion, before the Hale fire, back when the Hale Alpha had a pretty powerful position among the were packs"

"Why?"

"Talia Hale, the Alpha, had this...ability, that's unique to the Hales; she could turn herself completely into a wolf. That's why, we think, that Deucalion wanted to recruit Derek into the Alpha pack. To do that, the Alpha first had to kill everyone in their own pack. He wanted me to join too, and he was...pretty persuasive"

Rafael nodded slowly, gesturing for him to continue as he paused hesitantly.

"What about you? Why did he want you?" he asked when nothing came from Scott's clenched jaw.

"I'm..ah, I'm what they call a, ah, a True Alpha? Yeah, it ah, it just means...well, normally a Beta becomes an Alpha by killing one, but I didn't kill anyone. I just, sorta, became...an Alpha. Like I decided or something. But Deucalion wanted me to kill Jennifer Blake? The Darach, the one who, you know, with the Nemeton?"

Rafael had a feeling that Scott was skimming over the specifics of the True Alpha qualifications, but some of the hot tangle in his chest loosened when he realised his son was truly not a killer.

"Right, yeah, ah she killed all those people, all the sacrifices. She took your mom and the others"

"Yeah, exactly. So...when I didn't, ah, Derek he did this thing where he convinced her to heal Deucalion's eyesight and then she was too weak to fight. He—Deucalion, I mean –he...he cut her throat"

Rafael winced in sympathy.

"So she's dead" he didn't phrase it as a question, until Scott grimaced and he curved his face into a question mark.

"We don't actually know-" he tapped his fingers hesitantly on his knee, staring out his window.

"-we never found her body, so...but the other Alphas? They're all dead. Jennifer killed Kali, and Derek kind of killed Ennis, but when Deucalion left, Ethan and Aiden stayed. They'd already chosen this side, sort of. I mean Ethan stayed I think because he wanted to keep Danny safe, and Aiden because Kali ended up threatening Lydia...I don't know if Aiden loves her like Ethan loves Danny, but...I guess the thing is that now it's just...all screwed up because, there's my pack, which is Stiles, Isaac, Allison and Lydia, plus Derek and Cora, I think...but...we don't really know, _I_ don't really know. According to Derek, I had a pack before I was an Alpha; Stiles, Allison, Lydia. Him and Cora, they really only just came back, and...you know, Cora's still trying to remember everything that happened to her and Derek is _seriously_ messed up and...I mean, we're _trying_, but full moons aren't...exactly...a walk in the park. Everything smells like Alphas and blood and death, and all I want, really, is just for my pack to be okay, and to go to school, and for nobody else to die, but instead Peter's being a creep again, and there's kitsunes, which what the _hell_, and the Nemeton makes everything really hard because there's so much I can't do, and it's like the heart of darkness and I see it in Stiles and Allison and I can't _help_!"

They were quiet as Scott caught his breath, the air around the fragile as they both realised that Scott had admitted a lot more than he'd wanted to.

"That's...it's a lot for you to carry, Scott" admitted Rafael finally.

Scott shrugged, not meeting his eye, embarrassed. He stood up and tossed the notepad back onto his desk, pacing in front of his window. He dragged a hand down his face.

"I made a lot of mistakes. Especially with Lydia, and...with Allison"

Rafael shifted.

"I know I'm pretty new to all this, Scott, but...I think you're doing a pretty amazing job"

Scott glanced back over his shoulder at his father and gave him a short nod of recognition, but his eyes were dark. He didn't believe Rafael, and more than that didn't really care about his opinion enough to feel anything about the compliment.

"I had a conversation with Miss Martin the other day..." began Rafael after a moment.

Scott nodded, turned around and leaned back on his window sill, crossing his arms.

"She thinks you can help us"

"How?"

Scott shrugged and wasn't enthused by the prospect. Even as he spoke, it was clear that it was Lydia's words in his mouth.

"Covering up our involvement when something comes to town. You saw that mess at the warehouse, and at the morgue. The Sheriff can only do so much, and we're trying, but... You have access to information that Danny doesn't. You can help with getting Cora's death certificate, like, taken back or whatever-" he was watching Rafael carefully as he spoke, and shifted his feet. His words became his own again;

"-It's going to get a lot worse. This is just the start, and so far we've had two kitsunes, a harpy, a Skinwalker, a phoenix, a ghoul and something that was poisoning the water; a cockatrice Stiles said but Deaton said it was something else..."

That was just too much for Rafael to deal with, so he left it alone and veered in another direction.

"So Stiles, he's your, ah...emissary? Is that right?"

Scott shrugged and looked out the window again.

"I don't know. Deaton is...he's _technically _the Hale's emissary, and we don't...Derek said he feels like there is still a Hale Alpha"

"I thought the Hale's were all...?"

"Dead? Yeah. Peter Hale isn't" Scott was forthright in a tired, impatient way that made Rafael's mouth go dry. The way he said Peter Hale's name was like it was something sharp on his tongue, a razor held between his teeth.

"The guy who was, until two years ago, in a coma for, what? Five _years_?" Rafael pointed out, slowly.

The way that Scott smirked at him was Stiles all over.

"The guy who killed Laura Hale, bit me, attacked Lydia and kidnapped Stiles when he was in 'in a coma' Rafael. Get a clue"

It was the second time that Scott had used that tone of voice at Rafael. The only difference was that this time Allison Argent wasn't armed with a smoke bomb. Just when it felt like they were getting somewhere, Rafael had put his foot in it again.

"I can put an APB out on him. Questioning about the Hale fire? The case is open again" he offered, trying to make up the ground he'd lost.

"You could try, but nobody finds Peter unless he wants to be..." Scott trailed off and tilted his head in a remarkably canine way, twisting his upper body towards the window.

"Shit" he said under his breath and opened it, sticking his upper body out.

"_Shit!_" he repeated, pulling himself back in after a moment and grabbing his phone, hitting speed dial.

"Scott? What's..."

One day, Rafael would probably get used to taking orders from his kid, but it wasn't today as Scott raised a hand to silence him, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Isaac's hit trouble, I just heard him. Get Allison and Danny, track my cell" Scott said before whoever was on the other end of the line even answered. They didn't reply before Scott had hung up, grabbed a band from the drawer and strapped it to his arm, tucking the cell into it as he whipped his shirt off, speaking hurriedly to Rafael as he did so.

"I have to go. We know where to find you if we need help, but other than that, stay out of it, okay? Lydia thinks you can help, but I think that the fewer people involved the better. I don't need any more bodies, okay?"

"Where are you going?"

"Told you, Isaac's in trouble. Lock the door behind you" Scott dismissed shortly, and kicked off his shoes as he swung out his window.

"Jesus, Scott! What the hell-"

The boy was gone, leaping spectacularly from the second floor and running before he'd even landed properly. Within seconds, he'd hit the tree line and a heartbeat after that there was no sign he'd ever been there. Rafael was left alone in his son's bedroom again, heart pounding in his mouth and temples throbbing.


End file.
